Stephen G. McCombe, former president and founder of the Harvard University Security, Parking, and Museum Guard Union (HUSPMGU) and longtime Harvard employee, died last month of multiple organ failure. He was 59.

As HUSPMGU president, McCombe frequently pitted himself against the University administration during negotiations for better pay and the unfolding of a discrimination lawsuit filed in the 1990s by a fellow guard.

McCombe retired under pressure in 2003, when his health required him to carry around an oxygen tank. He suffered from diabetes and a weak lung.

His post, particularly in later years, placed him at the heart of the campus, where he could be seen nights patrolling the grounds around Sever Hall.

“He did everything he could for his fellow guards, he fought to the end,” said his widow, Jacqueline M. McCombe.

James K. Herms, a former extension school student who met McCombe in 2001 when he was reprimanded for riding his bike across the yard recalled, “When he was stationed in the yard he couldn’t walk across without people walking across to meet him and talk to him.”

McCombe began working for Harvard as a guard in 1983 when he was placed on the Longwood Medical campus. He was transferred to Cambridge in 1984, when Harvard hired him directly as an employee of the Harvard University Police Department (HUPD).

His involvement in the labor movement began in 1990, when he was elected as Harvard’s shop steward for Local 254 of the International Service Employees Union. McCombe later withdrew his membership after a only a few years, arguing that the leadership did not adequately represent its members. He took the Harvard chapter with him and went on to found the independent HUSPMGU in 1996, when he received official certification from the National Labor Relations Board.

“He was smart, I can tell you that. And he was a good organizer, I can tell you that,” said Tom Biggie, a fellow security guard who came to know McCombe in 1990 through the union.

The labor movement at Harvard gained steam in the early 1990s, when the HUSPMGU confronted University three years in a row about pay increases. The two ultimately signed a contract promising the workers a nine percent increase in pay over the course of three years.

At its peak, HUSPMGU represented approximately 150 Harvard employees, including security guards, parking attendants, and museum employees.

“He was the key person that sort of lit that torch” said James LaBua, the University’s deputy director of labor and employee relations, who represented the University during its frequent confrontation with the union.

“He certainly tried to do the best he could for the people he represented, but he was strong-headed,” LaBua recalled yesterday.

McCombe also battled Harvard in court, when he took up the cause of a fellow security guard, Viatcheslav Abramian. Abramian complained he was discriminated against as a result of his Russian background. His complaints were dismissed in an internal investigation.

In 1997, McCombe testified in the case, where a Superior Court jury subsequently awarded Abramian $2.9 million.

McCombe served as one of the last guards to be a direct employee of the University. In 2004, the University centralized its security systems under Allied Security, a move McCombe criticized, saying it exposed the campus to danger by entrusting its security to less-experienced guards with few personal ties to the University.

McCombe was born in New Bedford, Mass. in 1946, where he was one of three adopted children in a family of eight. A high school football player, he also served in Vietnam in the Navy from 1967-1970.

He met and married his wife in the 1980s, and later adopted her son by a former husband. McCombe is survived by his wife, two brothers, son, and new grandson, Hayden Stephen McCombe.

—Staff writer Natalie I. Sherman can be reached at nsherman@fas.harvard.edu.